Evil was made
by sleepingswan
Summary: She had done evil. She had done wrong things for the right reasons. She had done right things for the wrong reasons. She had done evil just for the taste of it. But in those last days, she had done everything right. And yet, there was no warmth in her heart.


**Disclaimer:** All characters belong to ABC's Once Upon a Time.

**Character:** Regina Mills

**Rating:** T

**Spoilers:** Up to 2x09 "Queen of Hearts"

**Summary: **Yes, she had done evil. She had done wrong things for the right reasons. She had done right things for the wrong reasons. She had done evil just for the taste of it. But in those last days, she had done everything right. And yet, there was no warmth in her heart.

**Note:** A late night crisis made me delete all of my stories on my old account, this one included. Then regret came knocking me down, and I decided to publish it again. This was my first baby in the Once Upon a Time fandom – I more vomited words and bullshitted my way through an explanation of why Regina Mills should have been invited to dinner than actually wrote any of it. I started editing it, but at some point I gave up – so read this with the knowledge someone new to the fandom would have on Queen of Hearts. This is more of a character study than an actual story – back then I was still trying to understand why I loved the Evil Queen so much – but I hope you enjoy reading it. If you have time, leave me a review telling me what you think about it. Thanks!

* * *

**EVIL WAS MADE**

* * *

She had done everything right.

Yes, she had done evil. She had done wrong things for the right reasons. She had done right things for the wrong reasons. She had done evil just for the taste of it. But in those last days, she had done everything right.

And yet, there was no warmth in her heart.

Regina knew she was capable of feeling it. She had felt it before, once, such a long time ago she was surprised she could remember. When her hands found themselves in between a stable boy's hands, their fingers intertwined and a matching smile in both of their faces, she felt it. Her heart would beat stronger, just as steady but she would be able to feel it hammering in her rib cage, matching rhythms with the pumps of warmness that went through her veins, burning slightly at the edges of her body, making her feel like little shocks were happening just because Daniel touched a tiny piece of her exposed skin.

Within months, she went from childhood to adulthood, barely stopping in her teen years. She went from being a child terrified of her rigid mother that would go hide behind her father's leg when she heard screams to being a young adult sure of what she wanted, what she had to do to get it and bold enough to face whoever got in her way.

The month that separated these two very so unlike chapters of her distorted version of a fairy tale had been a blessing she could never forget. Spending these months blissfully in love with a boy with nothing but affection to give her in return, the brunette had her proof that she knew how that warmth would feel like.

Or at least, she was sure it would have given her a hint of what to expect. For dear sake, it was not true love she was expecting – maybe just a little gratitude. Regina knew the warmth would have been tinier, without the tingling of her fingers and sure not running wild through her every vein, but it had to be something other than the ache she was feeling.

Maybe the affection she was hoping to see in a few pair of eyes would have been more similar to the one she saw on little Snow White's eyes in the early days of their relationship than the sparkle in Daniel's eyes. One of the things Regina missed the most was when she was unaware of how damaging that child had been to her and all that she could see was the genuine thankfulness for being alive. She didn't miss at all the twisted girl who told her mother about her true love, but she did miss the poor thing who didn't know how to keep an enchanted horse under control, who had that look in her eyes for weeks, just rejoicing life with her cheeks getting rosier every time she said "You saved my life and, for that, I shall thank you tirelessly."

And if she put her unhappiness aside, if she forgot the latent lack of passion her marriage provide her wish, she knew the king had some feelings towards her. His heart had been buried with his wife just like part of hers had been buried with Daniel, but the king loved his daughter more than anything in that enchanted land, so in the first years of that arranged marriage he would show some gratitude every once in a while, especially when his mind was floating in wine and she would had a rough time discerning his words.

The following years were a torture, with the slow painful tick-tacking of the clock remembering her she would be stuck there forever. Those years of emptiness fulfilled with dull tasks dragged Regina to a pit of sorrows and regrets, having with her a constant remember she would never know love again. She may knew thankfulness, but it faded away, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth, until she could no longer remember why she had saved the life of a child who had done nothing but preventing her from being happy.

When she found herself longing for long hours of restless sleep that never came and dreading the daylight only because it meant to fake a smile towards her court, when she started using her time to think of revenge, of thousands ways she could taste that happiness again instead of trying to settle in this life and find something to love, when she killed the kind, she knew she would never feel that warmth again.

Having her mother's voice echoing in the back of her mind in every moment she was awake, Regina wore black – "To match my rotten soul," she would say staring at her reflection, noticing how pale she looked in those dark dresses. She was mourning no longer her deceased husband, but herself.

Cora had been a terrible mother, but she was the only one Regina ever had. Slowly, as the years came by, she believed that love was weakness and only power can hold any strength. Somewhere down the road, Regina started remembering her younger self as a failure for letting herself being dragged to something only common folks fell for, that there was no such thing as true love when you could have power. Those words, always pointed by her mother's teachings, guided her through her path of revenge – she wanted nothing more than making everyone just as miserable as she felt since the second she cried her innocence away.

Power would be her only happy ending. With power, she could control other's lives, guaranteeing no one would ever rejoice in the happiness she never got to put her hands on for more than five seconds. She would be the one to control her own fate.

Killing the king was the first step into a road that would never bring her any real delight. The second step into that damned road was to kill Snow White – and for the few moments she thought the girl was dead she let herself believe that that was the path to a joy she would never truly conquer.

But even in those moments, when she could almost touch that warmth threatening to grow inside of her, Regina knew it was just outside her reach, just a tiny bit too far for her to grab.

When it came to her knowledge, merely minutes after, that Snow White still lived, she felt a wrath growing within her instead of her so wished warmth – she could feel her skin goose bumping, her heart beating fast and strong, she was almost too furious to not implode out of pure anger. Instead of bursting out, she took a heart. The lonely hunter's heart was one of the first she had ever taken, and she kept it in a special place in her chambers. This heart was one of the few she kept track of – soon the list was growing and growing to a point she didn't know how many hearts she had in storage, let alone know to whom they belonged.

She was becoming the one person she dreaded the most. Regina was becoming her mother.

If there was something she hoped for, was to find good inside of her again. She liked to believe it was still deep down inside of her, covered with layers of expensive fabric modeled into powerful dresses and bitterness she had been gathering for years now – there was too much weight upon that feeling for it to surface. She hoped someday she could say goodbye to all that sorrow and find happiness again. If not in a man, in little acts like knitting or turning a bad dish into a delicious one to kids she found on the road.

But rumors run wild, and when she heard people calling her Evil Queen, she gave up. She said goodbye to Regina, the annoying child who couldn't keep her chin up when her mother tried to teach her how to live, and welcomed the Evil Queen, someone who cared about no one except herself and tried and lived up only to her own expectations. She embraced her new identity, wore it like armor, so it could never be used to hurt her. Not again, not this time around.

More than forcing misery into other people, she didn't want to get hurt.

And seeing the woman who had stripped her from all happiness she could have got finding her Prince Charming and marrying him in a too good to be true kind of wedding was too much hurt for her not to be unmade. Locking herself into her quarters for an entire day, all she did was question why Snow White always got what she desired and the only thing she got was a lifetime experiencing misfortune. After crying herself to sleep, like the weak do, like the failure she was, she dreamt of wearing sky blue and chestnut brown again, hiding her horse with the wind making her hair looks like a delightful mess. When she woke up, with puffy eyes and sore throat, she knew she had the power to end this growing pain, and that was the only thing she wanted to use it for.

Watching her world crumble into pieces while withholding the power was something her mother would have never forgiven her for. Not that forgiveness was something her mother believed in – Cora's strong words never left her mind, not even for a day. And despite that cruel woman being an unholy piece of work, Regina held her dearly. It was her mother, after all, who taught her how to put an ending into someone else's ravishment.

Promising to take away everything the people in that land have ever held dearly was a tough promise to make, but she knew she had the resources to. Living up to her name, to the Evil Queen, she joined forces with people she would never thought about as allies, said hollow things that sounded just as powerful as the reputation she had grown into, did things her younger self would have despised and hate her for. She buried her feelings deep down, covered her good self with thirst for revenge.

The only moment her inner child surfaced again, the only split second she asked herself if it was really necessary, was when she had to kill her father. Hugging him before burying her hands into his chest, saying a silent goodbye to the one person who had always been there for her, helping her in her search for happiness, guiding her through her darkest moments, that was when it all seemed so empty of meaning. In that moment in between listening to her father's last words and looking at his heart standing still on her hand, she felt sorry for herself, she felt that all good had been drained from her. All she could ask for, in that moment, was for his forgiveness.

But it worked. Sacrificing who she loved the most, the Evil Queen watched as the Prince Charming stopped being so charming with an inch deep cut gushing blood out of his chest, as the stupid child white as snow turned even whiter watching the same scene as her, watched their child being dragged from their loving arms before she got the chance to take a nap on her crib. She watched as every person on that fairy tale land full of magic and happy endings had their memory erased and replaced with new ones, chosen by her, trapped in a world of misery and contempt, trapped in a land where she would be the one to hold the truth.

It is said revenge is a dish best served cold and this is how she felt. Regina felt that she had finally had what she had looked for all of those years, and yet, all she felt was a cold pleasure taking care of her immediate needs. It wasn't happiness and it didn't last.

Regina saw herself trapped in a city where she could rule them all, but she also had to take care of them all – and the last thing she wanted was to pretend to be concerned about anyone else's wellbeing.

But she found out she could take pleasure in small things. Regina enjoyed watching Mary Margaret looking longingly to those children who she was forced to teach things she could never teach her own child even if she remembered she ever had one, asking herself why she felt so empty when surrounded by grins and smiles; or going to the diner only to see Ruby getting so miserable with her Granny she looked like she would lose it and turn into a wolf in the bright sunlight. The fairies were fun to watch, all so restricted as nuns, not resembling at all those loosen up and sparkling mosquitos flying around your head. And her favorite, her three-course meal with fine wine and well played music, was those who had once had children, and now walked around with a void inside of them that would never go away.

If she had to be honest, that void was inside of her too, eating her up slowly. She had been warned by the most piteous creatures about it, that the curse was so dark nothing could ever be fulfilling again – the difference between the emptiness they were talking about and the one she actually felt, was that she had that nothingness inside of her since she could remember. It wasn't the curse that made her empty inside; it was the lack of love – a lack she tried to convince herself she didn't even care about anymore.

Eventually, it got boring to be the only one to remember how pathetic everyone else were when they were dwarfs and princesses and fairies. She needed something more than dull paperwork and something she could do with her eyes closed, like running a town. She needed a way to distract herself from all the misery she had been put through.

Rumpelstiltskin had been the one to whom she would run to when in need in the enchanted land, and so was in this one. His methods had changed, but he was still one to make deals and ask for impossible payments. When she asked for an infant, he had asked her the heavens and the stars – but Regina was the one withholding the power in that town, she could give him whatever he asked for. The brunette was willing to give anything and everything to have a child she could claim as hers – a child to love, to educate, to teach right from wrong, to fill the void inside of her. And, she knew that reason was within her, to brag about to all of those missing their kids.

Mr. Gold, as Rumpelstiltskin went for in this new land, found a three-week-old baby boy, healthy as they come, with thin black hair covering all of his so tiny head and pouty mouth in between round rosy cheeks. She named him after the one person who loved her from the day she was born: her father, Henry. She would watch his sleep, smiling obnoxiously happy when he made little bubbles or twitched her nose and ended up making a face. In those moments, she was happy. Henry made her just as happy as her father did. She was there when he took his first insecure steps holding her hand for support as his feet stumbled upon each other, when he said his first word – dada, when he ate by himself for the first time, when he fell from his bike and tainted the carpet with blood and tears, and that was the first time she regretted not having magic to cure his pain.

When he got older, things got trickier – she had no idea how to be a proper mother, she never had any worthy role model. Nursing and infant was one thing, educating a small child was something completely out of her knowledge. She got through it, grounding him when he did something wrong, rocking him to sleep when he was afraid, loving her as her father had loved her, relying on it to try and bring up a decent human being.

Some nights, when she couldn't sleep, she would sneak out of her room and sit on the floor in front of the half open door of Henry's bedroom and overthink things that didn't even need to be rethought. And those moments always ended up with her having a meltdown at four in the morning when she realized she had turned into her mother.

As soon as Henry grew out of his unconditional love for her, such realization crossed her mind more often than it should. Once the daylight would no longer bring her any comfort, those thoughts only made her now so rare moments of happiness with her son a little more miserable, made them taste a little too bitter. But she kept doing anything and everything to protect the boy, because that is what parents do. He remembered her of her father, his kindness and his urge to believe in good – she never tried to be good again, she just tried to keep Henry happy, solely because every smile he gave her made her heart ache with warmth.

She could deal with a lot, from wrathful witches to powerful curses, but she could barely live through her little boy calling her Evil Queen.

When his birth mother showed up in her door step returning Henry from a trip to Boston and suddenly decided that Storybrook was a place just good as any to stay for a while, she knew something was wrong. Emma Swan was somehow weakening the curse, Regina could sense it. More than protecting her curse to be broken, she wanted to protect her little boy from all the hurt that world of fairy tale could bring. And just as Miss Swan settled in town, those little moments of happiness with her son disappeared along with her recently acquired emotional stability and that sparkle of love she had grown so found of.

Emma Swan was a hurricane, coming through without much warning and destroying everything within her reach. She was trouble and Regina had done everything to shoo Emma from her life, her son's life and her town. Between punches and broken brunches, Regina grew to hate that woman who had no right to be there. At times, when Emma made a not unusual rage come running through her veins, she would stare deeply into the blonde's soul as if she could somehow make magic again and turn her into dust. And the worst part of it, is that Emma could make Henry smile with nothing more than a greeting – and seeing how much love she grew to demonstrate towards their son, Regina decided to tolerate that woman. At times, they fought like a divorced couple over their child, and it usually got the best out of them. Sometimes though, Emma would show genuine passion for whatever she did – saving Regina from a fire or talking to Henry over dinner – and that both infuriated and amazed Regina.

Every curse could be broken and so could this one. The emptiness Regina felt when she saw Henry lying dead on a hospital bed, that void mixed with a terrible helpless feeling was more powerful than anything she ever needed to face. It was more than she could take and she had no one to rely on. Seeing how Emma was breaking down into pieces warmed Regina's heart with the wrong kind of warmth: empathy, both of them feeling the same towards a dead body that used to be their son.

And when the blonde kissed Henry goodbye, when she broke the curse with that kiss, Regina was almost glad. She couldn't care that the curse she had given her life to keep going was broken when her baby boy was alive and well. He didn't say he loved the woman who took care of him for over ten years, he didn't even hug her – but it was okay, because he was alive and this is what matters.

Henry had been the flick of light to keep her from turning that town to shreds, from breaking herself into the heartless bitch filled with sorrow she used to be. Henry had begged for her to change – and she wanted to so much it was nauseating. He believed in happy endings and that she deserved one, so she would fight for a happy ending with him.

Even if it meant to help Snow White to get back to her Prince Charming, even if it meant to bring his birth mother back to his life and she could have easily stayed in the desert fairy land. She did everything she had within her hands to make that boy smile again, and hold her as he used to when he as an infant.

When Emma and Snow crawl out of the well, Regina is curled up on the ground nearby, her insides twisting and twitching due the amount of magic she had taken out of the portal that made it fatal to anyone attempting to pass through it. Hearing her son screaming "Mom!" makes her turn her head ever so slightly, because it throbs due all that spare magic within her – and understanding that Henry called Emma "mom", for a second she wished that magic had consumed her.

In that moment when her baby boy runs to the woman who gave him birth, she realized that she has lost everything. No matter what she does, Henry's heart didn't belong to her. I may have belonged someday, but it didn't then and it might never.

Regina does welcome Emma back, because it is worth seeing such a happy look on her child's face. She does follow them into the back of the store where she put Prince Charming under a sleeping curse to be used as a way of communication between two worlds to see how true love's kiss break any curse, no matter how strong it is. Watching as he rises from the dead as Henry did some time ago, Regina wondered if she could have saved Henry is she were the one to kiss his forehead. Probably not, she answered to her inner self, probably you are too filled with darkness to touch such a light soul.

Lost in thoughts, she was caught by surprise when two familiarly strong arms held her tight by her waist. It took her a few moments to realize her son was reaching out to hug her for the first time in months; it took her a few more moments to hold him, to allow herself to rejoice into that single feeling of warmth.

"You really have changed," he breaths out while still holding you close and you want to say that no, you haven't changed – you have just gone one step further into your life long search for you inner self that could feel joy. Regina sunk into him, thankful for having earned the rights to that hug.

But it lasted way less than it should have. Emma called him for dinner and she went after her, letting go of her hand and promising to talk to her later. As she watched the group of people walking out of the door, happily cheering the coming back of the two women and the waking up of a prince, she felt her heart dropping, and continuing to drop when she thought it could no longer.

Such a usual thing, dinner – and yet, she feels like this might be one of the biggest deception of her entire existence. As it sinks in, her heart breaks and once again, she wished her mother had took it away when she had the chance. Slowly, piece by piece, it comes together the image of the wolf girl, the little people, the stupid commoner who had become a prince, her long lost step-daughter, the mother of her son and the little boy eating together, happily rejoicing at a diner, none of them even thinking about her, about how she could have done the bad things she was used to, how she had chosen the right side for a chance.

She didn't want to be the center of the attentions. She just wanted to be part of it.

"You just reunited mother and son," Rumpelstiltskin's voice snapped her out of her sorrow, "Maybe one day they'll even invite you to dinner," but she just snapped back into it when he got out of the room with a tiny curl in his lips.

Regina refused to shed a tear, and yet, the pain was so intense. She had forgotten what it was like to feel like you are not and will never be good enough. Minutes dragged themselves slowly as the pain comes up her stomach, making her taste bile mixes with a new kind of sorrow – one more for her collection.

In those minutes of vulnerability she allowed herself to, she wondered how she is still not used to being so screwed over. She feels like that girl who had her dream of marrying a stable boy she loved taken away from her. Her swallowing gets stuck on her throat as she fought her tears back, trying to put back a mask that had served her so well in all those years.

The pain is just as raw as it was ever before, only carving new scars into her bones. And in the still silence of the back of the store, she came to the realization she had lost everything, and had neither the motivation nor the power to claim it back. In a dark forgotten realm of her mind, she could hear her mother whispering her usual words: love is weakness, you cannot rely your happiness on something you can lose, and you cannot be that stupid if you are my child.

Standing alone in the middle of several shelves full of recycled possessions, she made herself believe once again that evil is not born, it is made.

And if she was evil, everyone in that despicable town had their share in the blame.

* * *

_Fin._


End file.
